More than a million people take short-term mission trips every year, traveling to poverty-stricken lands to build homes, care for orphans and try to make a difference.

But Calvary Lutheran Church's high school youth found their mission field a little closer to home. Last July, a group of 37 kids and five adults traveled by bus to Chicago for a trip that brought them ministry opportunities big and small.

"It was an urban mission site there; it was absolutely incredible," said Tom Martin, Calvary's high school youth

coordinator.

The trip was booked through YouthWorks, a youth ministry organization that

offers weeklong mission trips for youth groups and families at 78 sites in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Puerto

Rico.

When they arrived, they were divided into ministry teams and worked with a local Boys and Girls Club, helping out with a seven-week program that provided activities for children in disadvantaged communities in Southside Chicago.

"Without that program, I don't know what their summers would have been like," Martin said of the local children served.

The ministry teams played games, assisted the group leaders, sat and talked with the children and helped out with craft projects. One group organized a talent show.

The youths and the children learned how creative they could be with very little. "Everything we had for craft projects was a scrap of a scrap," Martin said. For one project, their supplies included cardboard boxes, glue and scissors. One child made a house for a pet; another made an airplane with wings.

Most of the kids were 6 to 12 years old and "really energetic," said 18-year-old Kyle Bargmann, a senior at Stevens High School. For him, the trip was about "getting to make a big impact on the community that we were helping," he said.

The low-income, urban setting had an impact on the youths, Martin said. "It was such a different environment. If you went to Chicago on a vacation, you would never end up in Greenebaum Park," where one of the teams worked, he said.

Bargmann agreed, saying the trip gave him an opportunity "just to see another side that normally we wouldn't see, and know that we can help."

The youths also learned about living more simply as they spent the week sleeping on air mattresses on a church floor and getting along without their cell phones, which were collected upon arrival. Although there were some sighs at first, "It cleared their minds to be just in the moment," Martin said.

A Princeton University study found that 1.6 million people took short-term mission trips - an average of eight days - in 2005, at a cost of $2.4 billion a year. Some groups go as far away as China, Thailand and Russia. Not surprisingly, vacation destinations such as the Bahamas are the most popular places for mission trips.

But as travel costs continue to rise - and as a way to make missionary work more meaningful - some churches are revamping their programs to focus on bringing a message of hope to those closer to home, according to the study. That's the kind of trip YouthWorks plans, according to its Web site: one that focuses more on building relationships and less on building with hammers and nails.

The Calvary group found that the relationships they formed with the neighborhood children - and what they learned about themselves through those relationships - became the most important part of their trip.

"It was all about sharing a smile and getting one back from a kid," Martin said. "We kept saying, 'I can't believe how connected you can get in four days.'"

A simple foot-washing activity also proved to be emotional for the group, Martin said. Just as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, the leaders washed the feet of the youths at the end of the week, praying with them.

"It was so powerful, feeling God's power working through that. The leaders were serving the kids. It was the pyramid turned around, and that's what Jesus did," Martin said. "It was about opening up your heart and letting it happen."

For more information about YouthWorks, call 1-800-968-8504 or go to www.youthworks.com.

Contact Deanna Darr at 394-8416 or deanna.darr@rapidcityjournal.com.